, In Raised on Radio, Gerald Nachman revisits those halcyon days, tracing the rise of an industry by interviewing the writers, actors, directors, announcers, and producers who were responsible for such memorable programs as The Lone Ranger, Fibber McGee and Molly, Ozzie and Harriet, and You Bet Your Life. Anyone who grew up following the adventures of the Green Hornet and the Shadow and the misadventures of Amos 'n' Andy and the Aldrich Family -- or just wishes they did -- will savor this terrific overview of radio's golden age.

In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do 25 years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the radio years -- as a boy he did his homework to the sound of Jack Benny and Our Miss Brooks -- takes us back to the heyday of radio, bringing to life the great performers and shows, as well as the not-so-great and not-great-at-all. Nachman analyzes the many genres that radio deployed or invented, from the soap opera to the sitcom to the quiz show, zooming in to study closely key performers like Benny, Bob Hope, and Fred Allen, while pulling back to an overview that manages to be both comprehensive and seductively specific. Ruth Bayard Smith Nachman, an entertainment journalist, did extensive research and conducted many interviews, and he has spared the reader few of his findings. -- The New York Times Book Review Kirkus Reviews A sharp, nostalgic homage to the golden era of radio, told as both a memoir and a social history.

Nachman, a columnist for the New York Times syndicate, attempts to explain just how radio came to define American pop culture from the '20s to the '40s by examining the personalities, genres, and behind-the-scenes politics of network radio productions. As the earliest tycoons (like George Washington Hill of the American Tobacco Company and barn broadcaster Dr. Frank Conrad) contributed to radio's availability and mass-market appeal, a boom began that drew talent of varying degrees and generated a patriotic hype not unlike that which surrounds today's information superhighway: radio was to be the American medium that would bring culture and democracy around the globe. Instead, it introduced advertising to the country and created the formats-soap operas, news, sports, variety, sitcom, and drama-that remain in popular entertainment to this day. Nachman recalls the 30 remarkable years of radio's reign by remembering the programs-inspired first by vaudeville, then by Broadway-that he enjoyed as a child: from the sassy satirist Fred Allen ("the David Letterman of radio") to the fluffy but arousing teen-girl dramas like Junior Miss. Mirroring the country's domestic politics, radio programs of that era attempted to sweeten immigrant stereotypes and launch antiracist images of blacks (in what Nachman calls "a rather thin rainbow coalition"): the Italian immigrant comedy Life with Luigi, the blue-collar characters in 'The Life of Riley,' and the Jewish family in 'The Goldbergs' all told the immigrant story with bursts of ethnic humor and staunch Americanpatriotism. Beulah, a show about a black maid, tried to honor black culture (while using white actors-a practice that happily died out early on). Still lovable despite its flaws, network radio through Nachman's eyes is a treat. A humorous account of a radiophile's memory and longing for the return of the lost era. Synopsis In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do 25 years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the radio years -- as a boy he did his homework to the sound of Jack Benny and Our Miss Brooks -- takes us back to the heyday...

 Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 0-375-40287-X / 9780375402876
Hardcover AS NEW CONDITION New York 

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